During the first two years of the Biden administration, Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) often ended up having to be the responsible adult in the room.
Democrats had full control of Congress for the first time in over a decade, and many of them intended to behave like children left alone in a candy store—each pile of sugary goodness providing the energy to eat another, and another, consequences be damned. Manchin was the parental buzzkill, popping up every few months to remind his fellow Democrats that more federal spending won't fix runaway inflation, that budget deficits still matter, and that you can't tax money that doesn't exist.
